Across the ceiling an exodus
of bright green mold begins
the laborious journey, deserting
the anonymous darkness of high rafters
where bats sleep wet daylight hours away,
rocking in cartilage and velvet. You think
it's only a dream, drenched in cilantro
and monsoon; & you rinse your flushed
temples & cheeks with tap water, working
clear antibacterial soap over your fingers.
But given time, things learn the secret
of interstices: even the rind of an indifferent
orange contains so much scent; & fragments
of skin sleep in fingernail beds, prickling
to changes in temperature. Who is in every
mouthful of taste, in the slow simmer,
in the indentation where two bones meet,
barely touching, at the base of the neck?
Whose face did moonlight retrace
on the contours of your palm, so skin
could call back the lost syllables
of its name? & what is the name of this
equation, where on all sides risk
& fulfillment are interchangeable, where
they wrap their legs around each other
& kiss over the abyss, over the circle
of fire; the stain & trickle of sweat,
the bead of salt, the fluid of sex,
the crust on bread & linens that
hardens after, refusing to forget?
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.